ACLU lawsuit accuses Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department of harassing photographers

By Associated Press, Published: October 27

LOS ANGELES — The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on Thursday, claiming the law enforcement agency is harassing news photographers and other people who take pictures in public places.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, charges that sheriff’s deputies have harassed several photographers over the past two years. It states deputies have stopped people, frisked them and in some cases threatened to arrest them for taking photos near subways, courthouses and other public places.

It names as defendants Los Angeles County, the Sheriff’s Department and several individual sheriff’s deputies.

The action was brought on behalf of three photographers, one of them a reporter for the Long Beach Post news site who said authorities indicated they became suspicious when they saw him taking photos near a courthouse.

Another of the plaintiffs said sheriff’s deputies asked whether he planned to sell his photos to the terrorist group al-Qaida.

Sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore said public safety requires that deputies question people who might be engaging in suspicious activity, but that it’s important they do it respectfully.

“Obviously we have to ask questions. There are security issues that are always at large,” Whitmore said. He added that doesn’t mean his department believes the lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, has merit.

“Lawsuits only tell one side of the story,” he said. “We look forward to telling the whole story.”

The Long Beach Post photographer, Greggory Moore, said he was on a public sidewalk taking photos of passing cars for a story on Distracted Driving Awareness Month when eight deputies surrounded him. He said he was frisked and asked what he was doing.

Moore said authorities told him later that his taking photos across the street from a courthouse signaled a possible terrorist threat, which was why he was stopped and searched.

Photographer Shawn Nee said he was on his way home when he exited a subway station in Hollywood and decided to stop to photograph the new turnstiles there. He said a sheriff’s deputy asked him if he was “in cahoots with al-Qaida” before searching him. He said the deputy also threatened to arrest him when he wouldn’t identify himself or say what the photos were for.

Mickey H. Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, said such instances of photographers being stopped, questioned and searched is becoming more common, not only in Los Angeles but across the country. He added that security shouldn’t be routinely used as a “pretext” to stifle free expression rights.

“Photography is not a crime. It’s protected First Amendment expression,” said Peter Bibring, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California. “Sheriff’s deputies violate the Constitution’s core protections when they detain and search people who are doing nothing wrong. To single them out for such treatment while they’re pursuing a constitutionally protected activity is doubly wrong.”

The lawsuit asks that the court declare the actions of the Sheriff’s Department unconstitutional. It also seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Torch cams to give masses views from Lady Liberty

NEW YORK (AP) – Give me your tired, your poor — your Internet-connected masses yearning to see. Lady Liberty is getting high-tech gifts for her 125th birthday: webcams on her torch that will let viewers gaze out at New York Harbor and read the tablet in her hands or see visitors on the grounds of the island below in real time.

The five torch cams are to be switched on Friday during a ceremony to commemorate the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on Oct. 28, 1886. The ceremony caps a week of events centered around the historic date, including the debut of a major museum exhibition about poet Emma Lazarus, who helped bring the monument renown as the "Mother of Exiles."

The statue's webcams will offer views from the torch that have been unavailable to the public since 1916, said Stephen A. Briganti, the president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation Inc.

"The statue is the most famous symbol in the world," he said. "Most of the people in the world have seen it, but they have not seen it like this. It will be a visit that so many people, including New Yorkers, have never taken before."

Through the webcams, Internet users around the world will have four views, including a high-quality, 180-degree stitched panorama of the harbor with stunning views of Ellis and Governors islands.

They will be able to watch as ships go by Liberty Island and observe as the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center goes up floor-by-floor in lower Manhattan. They can get a fish-eye look at the torch itself as it glows in the night.

The five cameras, which will be on 24 hours, seven days a week, were donated to the National Park Service by Earthcam Inc., a New Jersey-based company that manages webcams around the world.

The cameras put viewers on the balcony of the torch and high above the crown, said Brian Cury, the founder of Earthcam.

"This is not your dad's picture of the Statue of Liberty," he said. "This is not a view from a tourist helicopter. This is unique."

Friday's ceremony also will be marked by a water flotilla, actress Sigourney Weaver reading Lazarus' poem and a naturalization ceremony for 125 candidates for citizenship representing over 40 countries.

The public is invited to attend the ceremony, with ferry service available between Manhattan and Liberty Island. The interior of the statue — from the pedestal down to the museum base — will close after the 125th celebration for up to a year so that stairwells, elevators and mechanical systems can be upgraded. The park itself will remain open to visitors.

The statue, designed by sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, was given by the French government to the U.S. as a token of friendship between the two countries and dedicated by President Grover Cleveland.

And while today it is known as a symbol of liberty for millions of refugees and exiles, initially the famous sonnet by Lazarus in the voice of the statue asking for "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" did not appear on the statue. It was not until 1903 that "The New Colossus" was placed on the pedestal.

Lazarus is the subject of a new exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan, which has views of Lady Liberty. It's to open Wednesday to coincide with the anniversary of the statue's dedication.

Curator Melissa Martens said Lazarus was born into the fourth generation of a Jewish family in New York prominent since colonial times. "They were some of the early people to articulate the Jewish experience in dialogue with the challenges of freedom and religious liberty," she said.

Featuring over 83 original objects from 27 institutions and individuals, "Poet of Exiles" is the first full-fledged artifact exhibit at a major museum to robustly explore the life of Lazarus, from her work as an advocate for immigrants fleeing the Russian pogroms of the early 1880s to her pioneering support for a Jewish homeland.

Lazarus died in 1887 at age 38 from Hodgkin's disease, never having known her poem would be united with the Statue of Liberty.

Barry Feinstein: captured rock's golden age dies

WOODSTOCK, N.Y. (AP) -- Photographer Barry Feinstein, who captured behind-the-scenes images from rock's golden age and shot iconic album covers for Bob Dylan and George Harrison, has died in upstate New York. He was 80.

Agent Dave Brolan says the Woodstock resident died early Thursday. He'd suffered various ailments and was hospitalized with an infection.

Feinstein's best-known images include the skinny, side-glancing picture of Dylan on the cover of 1963's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and of Harrison sitting among garden gnomes on his 1970 solo album "All Things Must Pass.

But Feinstein had a varied career that ranged from shooting Hollywood stars like Steve McQueen and Judy Garland to top rock stars of the 1960s and 1970s.

Feinstein is survived by wife Judith Jamieson and two children from previous marriages.

For more information visit:

http://www.barryfeinsteinphotography.com/

100,000-Year-Old Art Studio Uncovered

By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
From cave painters to Greek sculptors to post-modern filmmakers, humanity has always had its share of artists. Now, there's evidence that humans were decorating things thousands of years earlier than we thought.

Archaeologists have uncovered what they believe is a 100,000-year-old paint workshop in Blombos Cave, South Africa, about 186 miles east of Cape Town. The discovery, discussed in the journal Science, indicates that our early Homo sapien ancestors had a basic knowledge of chemistry and the ability to make long-term plans.

"The recovery of these toolkits at Blombos Cave adds evidence for early technological and behavioral developments associated with H. sapiens and documents their deliberate planning, production, and curation of a pigmented compound and the use of containers," the study authors wrote.

"Ochre" is the term archaeologists use to describe dirt or rock that contains red or yellow oxides, or hydroxides of iron; it is basically early paint. Researchers found hammers and grindstones that could have been used to make this ochre powder in the cave.

Additionally, they found two sea snail shells called abalone shells that probably served as containers to store a red concoction of ochre, bone and charcoal. Pigment residue on one of the bones suggests it was used for stirring and transferring the mixture out of the shell.

There is evidence that this mixture had been heated; perhaps liquefied bone marrow was used as a paste. Urine or water was also probably added to make it more fluid.

This is also the oldest evidence for use of a container, said Francesco d'Errico, study co-author and researcher at the University of Bordeaux in France. It appears that these containers were used multiple times.

"They really knew what they were doing. It's not just idiosyncratic behavior, but it's a very planned process," d'Errico said.

Ancient fragments of ochre have been found before from earlier than 100,000 years ago, but never in association with the objects to make it, or in containers, d'Errico said. Chemical analysis reveals three different types of pigment were used in this workshop, including yellow and red shades.

"It's really relatively complex behavior going on there that clearly indicates that the production of pigment for them was not just occasional," d'Errico said. "It was a very planned process involving a number of different raw materials."

This cave seems to have been used as a workshop, and then the early Homo sapiens left it behind shortly after making these compounds. It appears that sand blew into the cave and very quickly covered these objects, preserving them throughout the millennia.

So far no paintings have been found on the walls of the cave. Scientists speculate that the paint was used for body decoration, or as an antiseptic for preparing animal skins, or both.

"It may be combination of functional and symbolic reasons," d'Errico said. "In traditional societies, these reasons -- symbolic and functional -- often go together. One reason cannot exclude the other."